"There is one thing, my dear--er--Horace," said the Professor, solemnly, after dinner, when the neat parlourmaid had left them at dessert, "one thing on which I think it my duty to caution you. If you are to justify the confidence we have shown in sanctioning your engagement to Sylvia, you must curb this propensity of yours to needless extravagance." "Papa!" cried Sylvia. "What _could_ have made you think Horace extravagant?" "Really," said Horace, "I shouldn't have called myself particularly so." "Nobody ever _does_ call himself particularly extravagant," retorted the Professor; "but I observed at St. Luc that you habitually gave fifty centimes as a _pourboire_ when twopence, or even a penny, would have been handsome. And no one with any regard for the value of money would have given a guinea for a worthless brass vessel on the bare chance that it might contain manuscripts, which (as any one could have foreseen) it did not." "But it's not a bad sort of bottle, sir," pleaded Horace. "If you remember, you said yourself the shape was unusual. Why shouldn't it be worth all the money, and more?" "To a collector, perhaps," said the Professor, with his wonted amiability, "which you are not. No, I can only call it a senseless and reprehensible waste of money." "Well, the truth is," said Horace, "I bought it with some idea that it might interest _you_." "Then you were mistaken, sir. It does _not_ interest me. Why should I be interested in a metal jar which, for anything that appears to the contrary, may have been cast the other day at Birmingham?" "But there _is_ something," said Horace; "a seal or inscription of some sort engraved on the cap. Didn't I mention it?" "You said nothing about an inscription before," replied the Professor, with rather more interest. "What is the character--Arabic? Persian? Kufic?" "I really couldn't say--it's almost rubbed out--queer little triangular marks, something like birds' footprints." "That sounds like Cuneiform," said the Professor, "which would seem to point to a Phoenician origin. And, as I am acquainted with no Oriental brass earlier than the ninth century of our era, I should regard your description as, _a priori_, distinctly unlikely. However, I should certainly like to have an opportunity of examining the bottle for myself some day." "Whenever you please, Professor. When can you come?" "Why, I'm so much occupied all day that I can't say for certain when I can get up to your office again." "My own days will be fairly full now," said Horace; "and the thing's not at the office, but in my rooms at Vincent Square. Why shouldn't you all come and dine quietly there some evening next week, and then you could examine the inscription comfortably afterwards, you know, Professor, and find out what it really is? Do say you will." He was eager to have the privilege of entertaining Sylvia in his own rooms for the first time.